Category Archives for Teaching

I started the final year of my MSc in Psychology last Wednesday and the focus on behaviourism in my cognitive psychology learning module got me thinking (again) about the place of psychology in education.

My teacher friends who completed PGCEs recently told me that they had not studied any psychology on their course – they had not come across Piaget, Bruner, Vygotsky, Skinner et al in any way.

That’s such a shame as I found that to be one of the most interesting areas of my course and certainly influenced my own teaching. Many of the teaching techniques we use as teachers have origins in psychology – collaborative learning, scaffolding, discovery learning, spaced learning anyone? All come from psychology and the subject’s scientific sister, neuroscience. The Royal Society’s ‘Brain Waves’ report in 2011 specifically recommended that teacher training should include a component on neuroscience and it’s relevance to learning.

So why should teachers learn about psychology and neuroscience?

Well, for starters, understanding how children of all ages learn, is pretty fundamental to being able to teach them effectively.

How people learn, retain information and the ways in which this changes as a child develops can help to give teachers greater knowledge and understanding about their pupils and their learning. It can help you plan and teach better lessons, identifying different approaches to learning that may be most effective for your pupils and can give a teacher an understanding of why pupils behave in a certain way sometimes.

Psychology can teach us how we learn and assimilate information, how we use our memory, acquire language and skills. It can also teach us about social groups, child development, behaviour and learning difficulties. All of which are key aspects of education.

So, while there are people, such as the author of this article in the Guardian who advise caution when applying psychology theories in the classroom, or indeed those who say it’s of little consequence, I would suggest that researching and thinking about how pupils learn and trying out different ideas based on psychological research is better than not thinking about it, or trying anything new at all.

More evidence needed?

Yes, further robust evidence is needed, as actually advocated by the previous article and Tom Bennett in this New Scientist article, but dismissing it all as neurobollocks’ (yes, gentlemen on twitter), is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, surely? The wider world seems to agree that with more research, psychology and neuroscience may have much to offer education.

So, Year 7 and I are rocking and rolling with our badges! (If you want to know where we started read this post!)

The students have created some super badges, ranging from Great homework to Going the Extra Mile and Problem Solver. Almost without exception they have found the project fun, creative and have learnt a great deal. One noted; “This has been the BEST project ever”. The criteria, as expected, was the hardest part with some students doing this very well and others needing more support – from their fellow students rather than me. I have only intervened to try to create a relatively standard approach to make it easier (and less time consuming ) to track and award badges.

The emphasis is on the student to track and then claim their badges (again, taken from Martin Waller’s work with his class). All students have created a table listing the badges they can earn, the criteria and a column to track them. I then tell them when I am awarding them a ‘credit’ towards a particular badge. For example, in Tuesday’s lesson two students who rarely speak earned a ‘credit’ towards their confidence badge as they spoke out voluntarily in class. They need 10 credits to earn their badge.

It’s an evolving project and the first time any of us have done this, so of course we are all learning along the way. Every single student has designed something creative and original in their badge and it been a great way of getting the students working together, encouraging their creativity, collaboration and critical thinking skills.

This has been one of the best projects I have ever taught in terms of the positive reaction from the pupils and the ongoing benefits. Anecdotally I have noticed a huge difference in the students’ independence, willingness to ask questions and collaborate. The process has encouraged them to work together, obtaining regular feedback and striving to improve their work. I’m going to be getting some analysis from the students and will publish the results when I have them.

Furthermore, producing a badge that others will earn has no doubteldy contributed to motivation and a desire to produce a high standard of work and I hope the ability to earn their own and peer’s badges will of course encourage the behaviours that the badges reward! It’s a shame we are not able to use the Mozilla backpack at the moment, due to the students being under 13, however Mozilla I know are looking at ways of resolving this, so I’m certainly hoping in the future we will be able to try open, rather than digital badges.

Meanwhile we’re going old school with a document table for the, to track but I intent for them to use a Google site later this term to be able to keep their badges and best work on – eportfolio style (similar to Carrie-Ann Philbin’s work with her classes). I’m also looking at getting some stickers made. I think seeing their work printed out and stuck in their peers homework diaries would be pretty cool. in I’ll continue to update you on how the tracking / monitoring works towards the end of term, however for now I am looking forward to awarding some badges to my very well-deserving students!

Also, do check out James Michie and Duncan MacLeod’s work with their respective students – both are very generous with their ideas and undertaking some excellent student-centred work involving badges.

Our badge design process:

Research

What have you obtained badges or certificates for outside and inside school?

What badges would you like to earn at school in ICT?

What skills/behaviours can we reward that are not currently recognised?

What makes an effectively designed badge?

Design

Decide on badge you will design & what needs to be included & sketch out criteria

Sketch 4 different designs & obtain feedback

Decide upon final design & mock up in detail

Obtain feedback & change as necessary

Design badge using Adobe Fireworks

Obtain feedback & change as necessary

Criteria

Finalise criteria & gain further feedback to ensure is easy to follow for peers

I was lucky enough on Monday to work with staff (and children) at the beautiful St. Joseph’s in the Park school in Hertfordshire, to help them to utilise Google Apps for Education effectively.

It was a really super start to the term and the enthusiasm, attitude and creativity of the staff was incredible.

I have never actually ‘led’ a training session, where everyone is off experimenting with different practical applications in the space of 5 minutes! 🙂

The school is already making great use of Edmodo with children to set homework and communicate and by linking up Google Docs to Edmodo, particularly using iPads, the hope is, there will be increased collaboration and effective learning. Connecting Google Docs to your Edmodo account is incredibly simple and adds another dimension to an already sophisticated tool.

Having worked with staff in the morning, it was really fun to have three children come in and demonstrate some instant teacher/pupil feedback via a ‘live writing’ task using Google docs. Each pupil worked on a different homework questions and their teacher, Graeme Ellis, ‘popped in’ and gave them instant feedback. The children said it felt a little ‘weird’ that their teacher was watching them, however they thought it was quite cool and helped them to get instant feedback from their teacher. I suspect these eloquent youngsters may be among the first Digital Leaders at the school!

Finally, it was wonderful to hear from Louise Martin about how she is using her blog with her Year 3 class. She explained how simple it has been to set up and use and the overwhelmingly positive response from parents and pupils. Hearing her discuss so modestly how she posts all her homework, spelling lists and activities on there in multi-media format was testament to the usefulness of blogging for all involved; I’m sure there will be some more great class blogs coming from St. Jospehs in the Park very soon!

I was made incredibly welcome at St Joseph’s in the Park (and had some of the best cups of coffee I’ve had anywhere, never mind a school!). Neil Jones, the headmaster is really inspiring when discussing, and demonstrating, topics such as effective leadership, sustainability of schools and using technology creatively. If you don’t already follow him on twitter (or the school), then I suggest you do! I for one am very much looking forward to following how the staff (and children) are getting on!

I first fell in love with the keynote app a couple of years ago, and it remains one of my favourites. Presentations are super easy to design and. Depending on where I am, I either simply mirror my ipad to the projector (see below for more info), or I use my plug, or upload to Dropbox / Google Drive and I sign into one of those accounts and I’m off. I really do love keynote!

The good reader app allows me to hold large numbers of PDFs on my ipad and to annotate them. This has been a bit of a revalation, particuarly in terms of saving paper (no need to print out reems of print screens). Students save their work as a PDF and then I can transfer this either via dropbox or my mac to my ipad’s good reader account. I can then mark all the work using the annotation tools and return the work to the students, again either via email or dropbox. I’ve also saved the comments I’ve made in a document so I can use this to create a more official feedback sheet for large projects and have a copy of my comments in an easy place for Parents’ Evenings etc.

SocrativeI started using Socrative last year after being introduced to it by Steve Bunce and I really like the simplicity of it. On the ipad it’s even easier to create and share quizzes with students and receive instant feedback. Response from students has been over-whelmingly positive and it’s really easy to use for plenaries, recaps or even summative assessments.

Puppet PalsLooking for ways to introduce topics in ways that will grab your students’ attention? Look no further than Puppet Pals (and Morpho below). Puppet pals has a free version, although I’ve upgraded to . You can easily create little animated stories and I use it to set homework!

Morpho and PhotoSpeak are also fun apps that you can use to have famous people talking and setting tasks. Jessica Ennis introduced our last Year 7 project 🙂 I have found that they don’t always work with the reflector app, which is a pain as this is by far and away my favourite way to use my ipad in class.

Reflector App
Having seen how easy Apple TVs make it to display an ipad’s screen on a projector at during my work at Leverhouse and Leamore primary schools, I looked for a way of doing this. Although I’d love an Apple TV, budgets are super-tight, so reflector (previously called reflections) or Air Server it was. Having trialled both (you have to be REALLY quick with your reflector trial as you only get 10 minutes!), I plumped for reflector as it worked really quickly and effectively, and Airserver had a few download issues.

I love the fact that I can now reflect whatever is on my ipad onto my gorgeous big screen in the classroom. As I teach in a lovely, but slightly awkwardly shaped room, this has, quite literally, changed my teaching life as I can walk around into the nooks and crannies, ensuring all students are engaged and passing them the ipad to get involved directly in the lesson and WAY cheaper (and more effective in my opinion) than an interactive whiteboard!

If you’re considering doing this, there are lots of posts on reflector vs air server and I would recommend you try before you buy, just to see which you prefer.

So, there you go; a quick run down of my the apps that are helping me and my ipad be a more efficient, creative teacher 🙂

I have been following with interest discussions around Open Badges, however it was C.A Philbin and Martin Waller’s blog posts that inspired me to get going with trying out Badges with my students

So, for the past week I’ve been introducing Open Badges to my Year 7 classes and thought I’d share my experiences.

I really wanted the students to get involved in deciding what badges should be awarded. The questions we used for discussion were:

What have you already got badges for?

Why do those organisations give you badges?

What badges could we have in ICT?

The discussions surrounding those 3 questions were quite enlightening, as shy students who had not said a word during the previous 2 week’s lessons, shared their achievements outside school and as the penny dropped that these were badges outside ICT competencies – teamwork, creativity, volunteering etc, the enthusiasm of the class noticeably increased.

The students are going to come up with the criteria for awarding the badges – we briefly discussed the need for them to be challenging yet achievable.

They will also design the badges themselves. We are undertaking a Graphic Design project and so, getting the students to design their own badges. This serves a few purposes, not least because it kicks off learning about the principles of good design (essential for other projects such as web and games design), but further involves the pupils which in turn, I hope, encourages them to earn their badges and those designed by their peers.

Giving the students some ownership over the badges they can earn and what their badges will look like is important. As an adult I know that if I am involved and I think my opinions count, then I am overall more likely to feel part of the group. I want my classes to be inclusive places of learning and so far, I am learning as much (if not more) than my students. I’m very happy with that.

Week 2: Pupils have been working in small groups on their badge designs and have come up with some impressive ideas!

Martin’s pupils have also been coming up with their own ideas and criteria – very cool!

You might also be interested to know that my pupils are particularly keen on the idea of having physical badges as well as the ‘virtual’ ones. After some discussion on Twitter (it seems Martin is having the same discussion with his class), stickers might be the way forward. I’ll keep you updated!

Update: 9th November

Having decided upon one final design for their badges (after getting feedback from the rest of the class), students have been working on the awarding criteria, learning how to use Adobe Fireworks and transferring their paper designs into a graphic design.

Awarding CriteriaThe awarding criteria took some discussion, as students worked to communicate what they wanted people to do to get their badge in a simple, easy to follow way. Again, this was a great exercise as they really had to think about how we could monitor progress. For example, how do you decide when someone has ‘listened carefully every lesson’. They were all in agreement that their badges should be a challenge to achieve, with some teams coming up with a levelling system, so you could achieve different levels of their badges along the way to keep up motivation. We tried to make it very simple – how will you know that it’s time for you to collect your badge / how will I know when a badge needs to be awarded.

Students also decided that the easiest way to monitor the badges was to have a chart, where they could monitor their progress and know when it was time to receive their badge (this also makes it much easier for me to monitor!).

Again, the fact that the students, with some guidance initially from me, then from their peers, came up with the criteria themselves has been important for their sense of ownership over their badges and I’m really impressed with the way they have developed an abstract concept into, in most cases, easy to follow bullet points – another great skill.

Graphic DesignIt was then time to get going with the design of the actual badges. Rather than jump straight into the badges, we spent half a lesson designed an Angry Bird with Fireworks first, using this image as a guide, as the Angry Bird has been constructed from a series of basic shapes, manipulated using the software’s tools. This was both a great deal of fun and helped the students to consider what techniques they now knew that they could use when designing their badge.

The main techniques we covered were: creating shapes and changing their properties, using the sub-select and free-form tools to manipulate shapes, adding straight and curved lines, adding text, using the attach to path and punch-path tools.

The students will spend another lesson designing their badges, and so far I’m really impressed with the graphics I’ve seen and how they are solving issues they encounter along the way, often working together to solve a problem rather than waiting for me to be free.

This entire project is helping students to think creatively, work together to solve problems and I am very much looking forward to getting their badges finished and used in the classroom (I already have a few I need to award!). So the next update should be sharing their final designs!

http://www.socrative.com/ is a great “student response system” (think voting system but a million times better than the clunky, expensive ones).

If you are looking for engaging ways to assess your class, socrative should be added to your arsenal of tools.

I spent last Monday in a school in London where I shared some favourite web 2.0 tools with teachers and socrative was definitely top of the list.

Steve Bunce introduced me to socrative and it’s potential in the classroom, for where it was designed, is huge.

Teachers can get up and running with socrative in 10 minutes (possibly less). The interface is slick and it’s easy to use.

Use it for oral questionning, or create a quiz and set it for your students, deciding whether they do it at their own pace, or you control the timing. You can share quizzes with other teachers, see live results as they come in and download reports (some summative assessment sorted).

Students go to m.socrative.com and put in the room number you give them. After that you control the activities they see on their screens.

The best things about socrative…it’s free and works beautifully with a range of devices. Time to get those mobile phones out of the bags!

I was really cross this morning by many of the headlines flying around, for example, Gove’s Move to Scrap Boring ICT Lessons. What a demotivating headline to read for existing ICT teachers and certainly not the way to go about instigating effective change! Many of the ICT teachers I know work very hard to ensure their lessons are exciting, innovative and engaging and I certainly did when I was head of ICT. Mr Gove states in his speech; “Imagine the dramatic change which could be possible in just a few years, once we remove the roadblock of the existing ICT curriculum. Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11 year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch.” Erm, Mr Gove, this is happening NOW in schools all over the UK!

Anyway, away from the headline-grabbing soundbites, Mr Gove actually said that teachers no longer have to follow the National Curriculum. This is great! However, again a little outdated. As James Greenwood tweeted;” “Truth is that many ICT teachers worth their salt have been exceeding the reqs of the NC for a long time”. Having flexibility to do what is right for your students is very important, and, despite what many may be saying in the media and indeed Mr Gove mentioned a great deal in his speech, in my opinion, that will not always be Computer Science.

I totally agree that more could be done in schools to make ICT exciting and challenging, and including programming skills which are relevant for the 21st Century, is an important way. I loved teaching Computing elements to my classes years ago. However, I do think that there is a danger of, as many people said on twitter this morning, “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. There are some elements of the ICT curriculum that are great – animation, modelling, web design for example. I know these can be incorporated into an engaging Computer Science programme, but I am concerned that “coding” will be seen as the only worthwhile activity. It’s not.

For example, I am reminded of my low ability year 9 class, a delightful bunch for whom getting that cat moving backwards in forwards in Scratch was a major achievement. Teaching them programming or coding for a prolonged period of time would be agony for everyone. So, it’s great that teachers will have the flexibility to do what is best and I hope it stays that way.

I also hope that Mr Gove will take teachers’ expertise into account during the consultation process and not simply be swayed by what big businesses, influential voices and the media are saying. Teachers such as Mark Clarkson and Andy Field have been sharing excellent practice and taking a balanced view for a number of years. Those teachers involved in #ictcurric are also very passionate about making the ICT curriculum relevant, challenging and exciting and Open Source Schools and Computing at School have been advocating many of the things he discussed in his speech for years. Mr Gove, his advisors and those baying for ICT’s blood should respect that teachers have a great deal more practical knowledge than academics, enthusiasts and big companies about what works in schools. Although such organisations have their part to play and I respect that they bring different ideas and viewpoints to the discussion, they do not have the professional training, experience and knowledge to be shaping educational policy. Great teaching is about inspiring and enthusing students and giving teachers an official pass to get on with teaching what they think is best for their students, together with the time and resources to learn new skills, is key.

Last week I was lucky enough to be asked to deliver a workshop to around 20 international delegates on the use of Google Sketchup 8 for teaching design. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and we created tables, interiors and buildings in the session. I have to say that the results were some of the most impressive I’ve ever seen (far better than my own efforts) and I put that down to the creative, design-brains of the teachers involved!

Sketchup, as many of you ICT teachers already know, is an excellent, free resource for teaching 3D modelling, design, architechture (amongst many other things). It integrates brilliantly with Google Earth and really fires up the imagination. Perfect for a bit of pre-Christmas fun in the classroom!

I’d like to share the resources we used on the day – these are resources for learning, rather than teaching Sketchup. I have included a mind-map of teaching ideas and a quick idea for a pet home project. The resources are all available here. Please use as you wish.

I’m delighted to have been asked to write this guest blog post for Keboko in which I’ll discuss some of the ways in which Google Apps for Education is being used in schools and colleges to enhance teaching and learning. From giving students new and safe ways to share their work, to increasing communication between staff and reaching out to the community, Google Apps for Education has something for every educational organisation!

Increasing collaboration and communication amongst students.
There are many ways in which Google Apps encourages students to work together. My favourite tool from the Apps suite continues to be Google Docs which allows students to work on one document in real time. This means, if desired, an entire class can collaborate on one document. In Phil Bagge’s primary class, his pupils conduct cooling experiments, enter their data on one spreadsheet and then undertake analysis as a whole class using the built in graphing tools.

Add into the mix the in-built chat facility when working on a document and you have a really powerful way that pupils can quickly and easily collaborate. In my own, and other teachers’ experience, once students have got over the initial novelty of the ability to send instant messages and work on the same document at once in Google docs, they generally use it sensibly.

Subsequently, it can have an incredibly positive impact on the way they think about and self-assess their work as shown in Oliver Quinlan’s class. However, as James Mitchie’s experiences illustrate, even with the best of intentions, collaboration in this way is a new concept for students and takes time and careful planning to work effectively.

Another great way of increasing student collaboration is through a shared calendar on which they input their birthdays and other important dates. Responsibility for this can be shared amongst the entire class, or one or two pupils each half-term. Shared calendars are also a great way for schools to increase communication with parents.

Encouraging Parental Engagement
The ability to share and collaborate on multiple calendars means that schools can easily share important dates with parents. The calendar can be embedded into the school website, or another site, along with blogs, You Tube channels and other useful links as Helen Morgan has done in her department.

Google Sites are a very simple web design tool for children to use and Ian Addison’s pupils have been creating their own websites to share information about their local area. Many schools are also starting to use Google Apps instead of expensive virtual learning environments and Kevin McLaughlin outlines the process he went through to do just that here.

Furthermore, Google forms are also a superb way to find out what parents are thinking and collect anything from feedback on the school website to preferences for appointment times at parents’ evenings. The beauty of course with forms, other than the ease with which they can be created and shared via email or embedded into a website, is that the results are automatically collated into a spreadsheet, complete with timestamp. It is therefore hugely beneficial for schools who have been collecting such information via paper forms. Google includes some good instructions to using forms here.

Increase Teacher Productivity
Forms can also be used in many ways, to collect data and opinions and saving teachers time which they can then use to focus on teaching. There are some fantastic ideas from teachers all over the World in Tom Barrett’s fantastic ‘Interesting Ways’ series. Another great, time-saving way of using forms is to create self-grading quizzes for pupils. A detailed tutorial of how to do this is here.

Moreover, communication and collaboration between staff becomes easier using Google Apps. Sharing departmental or administrative documents is simple and they can be worked on by multiple staff simultaneously meaning less time spent on administration and more time for teaching.

Similarly, the ability to share calendars with different groups allows senior managers and departments to have their own shared calendars which makes arranging meetings or checking when people are available very straightforward. A school can also set up a room, or laptop trolly as a resource, making booking that room or trolley very simple and one less administrative task for someone to have to manage. Reminders can be sent via email, popups or text message, making life easier for busy teachers.

Indeed, the ability to access email, documents & all information from home & any device with internet connection means staff can access their work from anywhere and at anytime, if they choose to do so, and being able to publish calendar events directly to twitter is fantastic for a school that is trying to increase communication with parents. Danny Silva shows you how here.

Although I have really only been able to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with Google Apps for Education in this post, I hope I have shared with you how the Apps suite is offering great collaboration and communication opportunities for students, staff and parents alike. Put simply, Google Apps has real scope to enhance teaching and learning in any educational organisation. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to Go Google!